


Press Into The Bruises, And Feel Something

by trainwhistlesatnight



Category: Skulduggery Pleasant - Derek Landy
Genre: Abuse, Despair, Gen, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-26
Updated: 2019-08-26
Packaged: 2020-09-27 07:47:50
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 678
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20404183
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/trainwhistlesatnight/pseuds/trainwhistlesatnight
Summary: Being in the necromancer temple isn't all just playing with death and shadows, and to get to the title of High Cleric, is a rough one.





	Press Into The Bruises, And Feel Something

**Author's Note:**

> I refuse to shut the fuck up about Quiver and you all Will like it.  
If you have requests or whatever hmu at train-whistles-at-night on Tumblr!

You didn’t realize it, but you haven’t felt anything for a long while. You put away emotions and pain or any feelings at all under your bed and never went looking for them again. When you want to feel, you press the bruises you earned from disobedience and rebellion. You earned them from daring to speak out against what you were taught, for daring to question the things you knew, because there had to be other ways out there that people lived. Didn’t there?

When you were old enough, you asked why your people never went outside, and were shoved outside with no help for a week with only the robes you had on your person as cover. You got pelted with rain and slept under trees on the driest part under it you could find. When you realized you’d scraped up your knees and no one was going to help you, you cried so hard you vomited. When you got hungry, you scrounged and begged for food, and got tossed the scraps people on the street were willing to give, or better yet toss, at you. 

You came back at the end of the week, bruised and sick. When you did, the High Priest wrapped you in your arms, and told you this is why you didn’t leave. No one out there would help you because of who you were. He told you he never wanted to hurt you, but you had to be taught a lesson, and this is how it had to be taught. You cried in his arms, and begged for forgiveness, and got it after long enough. 

You didn’t know you were being harmed. You didn’t know you were being manipulated. How could you have? You weren’t so old, and didn’t have much experience in the world. These were the only people who ever cared. The High Priest was the only one who loved you in the way a parent should. At least, that was what you thought.

You got older and snuck out. You got hurt and punished for it. You met people with actual parents. The parents loved them and cooed at them. They were uplifting and loving.

The High Priest wasn’t like that.

And you realized he never loved you.

He loved what you did for him. He loved that you and the others respected him and did whatever he asked with hardly a question about it. He loved your submission into obedience. 

And you never had a way to argue it. You envied Cleric Wreath, who got to go outside and do whatever he wanted and speak with whomever he wanted. Cleric Craven spoke more than you did, and he got bashed for it. It’s like he didn’t ever learn.

You warned the little ones and newcomers to never speak against him, for fear of them being hurt. When they did and got hurt anyway, you avoided their eyes. You consoled them how you could, though you were never particularly good with feelings, and your mistreatment surely didn’t help. 

It wasn’t your fault they’d get hurt. You warned them and they made the decision anyway. But it still upset you, and you didn’t show emotion anymore, for your own fear of being hurt was too strong. So you’d pack those feelings away in a box, duct taped shut.

When the High Priest speaks of morally wrong things, things you disagree with, you want so badly to yell and tell him he is wrong. To make a scene. You used to, used to tell him how it would hurt other people, how it wouldn’t be worth it in the end.

Disobedience did not get you the title of a High Cleric.

Disobedience got you a black eye and bruises.

Disobedience got you a beating and made you obedient.

Obedience made the High Priest ‘like’ you.

Obedience made the bruises go away.

Obedience kept you from leaving, because where else would care about you?

Surely no where else, and besides. The temple was your home, where you were safest.

Wasn't it?


End file.
